International Launch Services (ILS) plans to resume commercial launches of Russia's Proton rocket Sept. 15 following the conclusion of an investigation into a July 2 mishap that sent one of the heavy-lift vehicles crashing to the ground seconds after liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The company says its own review squares with the findings of a Russian government investigation into the root cause of the failure, which was attributed to faulty installation of three yaw angular-rate sensors on the first stage of the Proton M/Block DM3 launch vehicle.
Eileen Arnold, a systems engineer at UTC Aerospace Systems, Charlotte, N.C., has been named an International Council on Systems Engineering (Incose) fellow for her contributions to systems engineering. She was cited for leadership in establishing Incose's Expert Systems Engineering Professional credential and for industry promotion of systems engineering.
Meanwhile, the Transportation Department is working to designate permanent areas of the Arctic where small UAVs can operate 24/7 for research and commercial purposes, with the first approved operations coming this summer. The Arctic airspace comes on top of six congressionally mandated domestic test centers the FAA is racing to identify in a closely watched announcement expected by the end of this year. So far, 25 potential centers in 24 states have submitted proposals for the sites, Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari told the AUVSI conference.
Sooner or later, Russia's aerospace and defense industry will have to leave the post-Soviet era behind. It's not easy. Russia still has some enviable technology: combat aircraft flight control, missile systems and rotorcraft, to name three. But it takes more than technology to compete in markets around the world. The upcoming MAKS 2013 air show should yield a few answers to the questions raised in the following pages. How good is the T-50 fighter, and when will it be fully operational? Can Russia's industry become a player in the world's commercial markets?
As it winds down its role in Afghanistan, where strategic rivalry in another era was called “The Great Game,” the U.S. Defense Department has been suiting up for the next big round of conflict: cyberwarfare. The Pentagon has been racheting up the rhetoric gradually, with former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warning of a cyber-Pearl Harbor and more and more officials publicly acknowledging cyberwarfare.
Phil Lynch has been appointed chairman of the board of the Louisville (Ky.) Regional Airport Authority. Jim Welch was reelected vice chairman and Jon Meyer secretary-treasurer. Lynch is vice president and director of corporate communications and Welch vice chairman of Brown-Forman. Meyer is partner and chairman of accounting firm of Jones, Nale & Mattingly.
Sabine Minarsky-Bstandig (see photo) has been appointed vice president/manager of the Human Resources Div. of the Austrian Airlines Group, effective Nov. 1. She succeeds Michael Ruplitsch, who has left the company. She has been head of human resources for Erste Bank.
Long before the sequester blew in from the north like Smaug the dragon and stole their gold, the Pentagon's bosses had put themselves in a place where they steadily needed more money year-by-year to do business as usual.
Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver, who has been a policy lightning rod at agency headquarters as the Obama administration worked to shift U.S. human spaceflight from a government-run operation to a commercial venture, has resigned to become general manager of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA). A former aerospace consultant, Garver joined President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign after initially supporting Hillary Clinton.
NASA says it will spend $55 million in fiscal 2014 to fund new milestone payments to the three companies developing commercial crew vehicles under the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) phase of the seed-money effort. The companies will also add unspecified investments to meet the additional milestones, which were listed as optional under their 2012 Space Act agreements, and will extend the CCiCap phase from May to August 2014.
Michael Foale, long NASA's most senior active astronaut, has retired from the space agency after three decades and a half-dozen spaceflights. One of them—a 145-day mission to Russia's Mir space station in 1997—was interrupted by a collision with an out-of-control Progress cargo capsule. During his 2003-04 command of the eighth expedition to the International Space Station, Foale became the first American to accumulate a year in space on his way to logging a pre-retirement total of 375 days.
Christine Kelly Singley has become managing director of corporate communications for US Airways. She was head of executive, international, operational and internal communications for Delta Air Lines.
Phillip Spector has joined the satellite/space practice at law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in its Washington office. He was general counsel and head of business development at Intelsat.
USAF Maj. Gen. Margaret H. Woodward has been appointed director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office in the Office of the Vice Chief of Staff at USAF Headquarters at the Pentagon. She has been Air Force chief of safety/commander of the Air Force Safety Center, Kirtland AFB, N.M. Brig. Gen. Lee K. Levy, 2nd, has been selected for promotion to major general and appointment as vice director of logistics for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. He has been director of logistics at Headquarters Air Mobility Command, Scott AFB, Ill. Levy will be succeeded by Brig.
Spacecraft manufacturers in Europe and the U.S. are finding new business in Brazil's emerging satellite market, with Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy, and Palo Alto, Calif.-based Space Systems/Loral (SSL) tapped in recent weeks to build new commercial spacecraft. Brazil, the world's seventh-largest economy, is expected to spend roughly $2 billion between 2012-15 on new civil and military space initiatives.
Aug. 29-Sept. 1—Asian/Australian Rotorcraft Forum. Tianjin, China. See www.arf2013.nuaa.edu.cn/ Sept. 3-6—39th European Rotorcraft Forum. Moscow. See erf2013.org/ Sept. 5-8—China Helicopter Exposition. See www.helicopter-china-expo.com/ Sept. 9-12—Fifth Boeing/Northrop Grumman/Elysium Joint Global Product Data Interoperability Summit. Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort, Chandler, Ariz. See www.gpdisonline.com Sept. 10-12—AIAA Space 2013 Conference and Exposition. San Diego. See www.aiaa.org/SPACE2013
It seems everybody is all “Fired Up” and moving in opposite directions: the UAE's GCAA urges installation of cockpit video recorders (CVR) in its final report on the 2010 crash of UPS Flight 6, and for 13 years the NTSB has pushed the FAA to require just that. But the FAA has declined to act, and pilot unions “are firmly against the idea.” So what else is new?
